Sleep quality buffers the effects of negative social interactions on maternal mood in the 3–6 month postpartum period: a daily diary study

Abstract

Sleep and social relationships are two key determinants of psychosocial health that undergo considerable change across the transition to motherhood. The current study investigated the bidirectional relationship between daytime Positive and Negative Social Interactions (PSIs & NSIs) and nighttime sleep quality on maternal mood across 1 week in the 3-6 month postpartum period. Sixty healthy, non-depressed first-time mothers completed 7-consecutive days of daily social interaction and sleep diaries. Results indicated that higher than average sleep quality buffered the effect of higher than average NSIs on maternal mood (i.e., buffered mood reactivity) and appeared to promote mood recovery following a particularly "bad day" (i.e., higher than average NSIs). In addition, although PSIs were more common than NSIs overall, the most frequent and positively rated PSIs were with baby as were the most frequent and negatively rated NSIs. To our knowledge, our results are the first to characterize the impact of PSIs on postpartum maternal mood, assess maternal-infant social interactions in daily diary study of postpartum social relationships, and demonstrate the role that maternal sleep quality plays in social discord-related mood reactivity and mood recovery processes in the 3-6 month postpartum period.

The subcomponents of affect scale (SAS): validating a widely used affect scale

“…While the subscales do provide utility, some researchers may still opt to use the aggregate positive or negative affect subscales as has been done in past research (e.g. Cohen et al, 2003Cohen et al, , 2006Jenkins et al, 2018;Lillis et al, 2018;Poole et al, 2011;Sultan & Fisher, 2010). The findings suggest that the items from the SAS do load on to two unique factors (negative and positive affect).…”

“…Investigations using the overall negative affect scale find that higher negative affect is associated with greater flu/cold symptoms (Cohen et al, 2003(Cohen et al, , 2006, higher disease severity in individuals with Type 2 diabetes (Sultan & Fisher, 2010), and lower sleep quality (Lillis et al, 2018). Similarly, studies using the overall positive affect scale find associations in the expected directions, with greater positive affect being associated with better sleep quality (Lillis et al, 2018) and more physical activity (Poole et al, 2011). Further, studies utilising the subscales find more nuanced effects.…”

The Effects of the Emeryville Fair Workweek Ordinance on the Daily Lives of Low-Wage Workers and Their Families

“…Worse sleep quality, for example, is related to both heart disease in the adult population (Cappuccio et al 2011) and depression among parents (Park, Meltzer-Brody, and Stickgold 2013). Poor sleep quality is associated with more harsh parenting behavior (Kelly et al 2021), and worse daily sleep quality has been found to exacerbate the effects of chronic and daily stressors on daily negative parental mood (da Estrela et al 2018;Lillis et al 2018;Mihaila and Hartley 2018). Thus, improvements in sleep quality may have the potential to lead to longer-term improvements in family functioning and child well-being, such as more positive parent-child interactions, reduced parental stress, and improved child behavior.…”

Relationship among sleep quality, depressed mood, and perceived social support in older adults: A longitudinal study

“…Moreover, the physiological dysregulation associated with insomnia or sleep disturbance results in psychological problems, such as depression, which cause individuals to be withdrawn from networking activities (Maier & Watkins, 1998). More specifically, poor sleep has always been shown to disrupt efforts to regulate emotion (Lillis et al, 2018), amplifying negative emotions in response to unpleasant events and reducing positive responses to pleasant ones (Dov et al, 2005). Some researchers argued that sleep quality is one of the root causes of depression in older adults (Zhang et al, 2020).…”